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Frodo Baggins (Christopher Guard). Our hero, who looks like a cross between a chipmunk and a felt dishcloth. Doesn't do anything particularly heroic, but gets the most of the very little character development available.

Sam Gamgee (Michael Sholes). Frodo's faithful sidekick, sadly given the role of Odious Comic Relief, as well as the most ghastly set of teeth since Steve Buscemi. I'd say there was a subtle subtext here that Sam is deeply in love with Frodo, but it's more like skywriting with brass band accompaniment.

Gandalf the Grey (William Squire). Technically a wizard, though his wizardliness mostly consists of carrying a stomach-on-a-stick and providing all the exposition. Presumably has some sort of muscular disorder, because he constantly waves his arms and can't sit still for five minutes.

Aragorn (John Hurt). The ugliest "manly" hero ever. Aragorn has been given a broken nose andfor some reasona miniskirt. John Hurt, the Embarrassed Actor of this movie, does a pretty good job with the poor material he's given.

Legolas (Anthony Daniels). The goofiest and most bizarre looking elf ever. Says and does very little.

Gimli (David Buck). Supposedly a dwarf, but as tall as Aragorn. Gimli says and does even less than Legolas. And he's even more of an extraneous character than that dwarf in the Dungeons & Dragons movie.

Gollum (Peter Woodthorpe). Possibly the dumbest looking character in a movie full of them. Gollum isn't scary or menacing, and moves like a cardboard skeleton with Parkinson's. Also, he looks like the animated version of the Grinch. Did I mention his loincloth is exactly the same colour as his skin?

The Black Riders. Actually, the Brown, Limping, Groaning and Snuffling Riders, but let's not split hairs. Do a very half-arsed and incompetent job of trying to catch Frodo and Company, making me wonder if Sauron would be better off hiring Tiger and Bruno for all his hero-catching needs.

SarumanAKA Aruman (Fraser Kerr). The White Wizard, who once insisted he was really the Wizard of Many Colours, has mysteriously become the Red Wizard somewhere between book and screen. An unthreatening villain who sounds like all he really needs is a good, stiff drink.

Merry and Pippin (Simon Chandler and Dominic Guard). Aside from the fact that it's impossible to tell who's Merry and who's Pippin, there really isn't anything to say here. There's not a single brain or personality between the two.

[Webmaster's Note: Special thanks to frequent contributor Jason Sartin for helping to edit this recap. Since I'm one of the few people in the world completely unfamiliar with The Lord of the Rings (the books and the movies), I had to insist that Jet and Jason come up with a recap that would be accessible to non-LOTR fans. So, even if you've never read a word of Tolkien, I think they've come up with a recap you'll still enjoy. —Albert]

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Well, here it is. The first attempt to bring Tolkien's famous trilogy to the big screen. And before I attempt this recap, it's confession time: I didn't like the Lord of the Rings books.

Why? Well, the short answer is that, in my humble opinion, Tolkien lacked restraint and bogged down a potentially thrilling, involving tale with seventy-three textbooks' worth of unnecessary, extraneous information. And if, like me, you found the Lord of the Rings novels confusing, under no circumstances should you attempt to use Ralph Bakshi's lame cartoon adaptation to clarify any of the convoluted plot points and character backstories.

Oh yes. Lord of the Rings, the Animated Version. Oh dearie, dearie me. Where do I even begin describing what went wrong in outline, let alone in detail? Not only does it twist Tolkien's elaborate world all out of coherence and make his characters as goofy and grating as possible, but it doesn't even look any good. Yes, in addition to being impossible to follow, the animation is utterly hideous. I suspect if I hadn't watched Peter Jackson's infinitely superior adaptation first (which, admittedly, helped explain the books, too), I wouldn't have had the faintest idea what was going on.

For a film where exposition is paramount, they hired a screenwriter who either knew nothing about the books, or expected everyone in the audience to know them by heart. Speaking as someone with only a passing acquaintance with the books, I found this massively irritating. Which is why I've happily jumped at the opportunity to apply my naturally bitter, sarcastic nature and show you exactly where this movie went wrong.

The movie's biggest problem, of course, is they never actually finished it. Much like Monster A-Go-Go or When Time Ran Out... or any number of troubled productions, Bakshi's LOTR was released uncompleted. It doesn't end, so much as it just stops, with a few lines from the narrator hastily slapped on to give the impression that it's a finished film.

And it's not just the story that's unfinished. The film was animated using rotoscoping, a technique where actors are filmed going through the motions, and then animated characters are drawn over them. Sadly, the budget obviously ran out about halfway through, because the process of animating was never finished. Hence, animated characters will suddenly become live actors with outlines drawn around them, and tinted really drab, hideous colours. And these changes don't just happen from scene to scene; they often happen during a scene.

Hammering the nails even tighter into this movie's coffin lid is the fact it was made in the '70s. There were a lot of good things about the '70s, but this movie chose to preserve some of the worst. In this case, that means lots of weird, psychedelic, pot-influenced imagery, and huge hair on every character that looks like a bouffant the size of a watermelon. It doesn't get much more '70s than that.

The movie opens with a blast of loudand very datedorchestral music. This is the sort of music they used in '60s Disney movies, only scratchier, cheesier, and a thousand times more lifeless. It mostly puts me in mind of the famous theme from The Great Escape.

Most oddly, the opening scenes aren't even animated. They're just shots of actors filmed in silhouette through cloth, and tinted red. Yes, Bakshi is such a great animator, he didn't even need to show us any actual animation to convince us of this fact. We watch as several unimpressive silhouette-mation characters pound on anvils with cardboard hammers. And then the second cousin of the Opening Expository Crawl, the Obnoxious Patronising Narrator, arrives to wreak his cruelty on us.

The narrator, who shall henceforth be known as OPN, has an incredibly old-fashioned British accent. Seriously, he sounds like a newsreader from the 1940s. And as an added bonus, he rolls all his Rs.

OPN begins lecturing us about how the Rings of Power were made and distributed to various rulers of elves, dwarfs and men. OPN goes on to make the incorrect assertion that the Dark Lord Sauron (ye gods, that name sounds so cheesy nowadays) learned how to make Rings after everybody else. Sorry, guys... that's not what the books said. So, right off the bat, the scriptwriters tip us off that they didn't bother to do much research. How bad is that? Right out of the gate, the movie's getting stuff wrong that even I know, and I didn't even like the books.

No one can defeat... GWAR!

Anyhow, we're briefly told about the One Ring and how it was made to control all the other rings, while some incredibly lousy "battle" scenes play out, still performed by live actors behind red cloth. It's just a bunch of guys shuffling vaguely around in funny costumes, and here we get our first (and as it turns out, only) look at Sauron, basically a guy with a pair of horns on his head. Say it with me, everyone: "The Dark Lord demands... a shrubbery!"

Then some other guy (who looks exactly the same as every other guy: a humanoid shadow carrying a flimsy sword) saves the day by cutting the ring from the hand of the Knight Who Says "Ni".

I'm sorry, but I'm at a loss to get across to you just how unconvincing this all looks. Mister Silhouetted Hero makes a really slow, weak swing with his sword, and the Knight Who Says "Ni" starts hopping around and clutching at his hand like he's just been rapped across the knuckles with a ruler (yeah, like that). After which, we cut to the Ring itself rolling merrily around on the floor. What, no blood?

Sauron is on the left. Sorry, this is the best picture of him you get. (And no, please don't ask me where he's touching that guy in the middle.)

Mister Silhouetted Hero wanders around with the ring, while OPN rabbits on about how he should have destroyed it but didn't, and how the Dark Lord's (snicker) spirit lived on because of it. Much to my satisfaction, a bunch of orcs show up and shoot him (Mister Silhouetted Hero, not the narrator, sadly), causing him to fling his hands in the air like he's had enough. I think I know how he feels, and we're only five minutes into the film.

We're then told briefly about the creation of the Ringwraiths (or, as OPN calls them, the Rrrrrrringwraiths), the now-evil owners of the other magical rings, who became Sauron's slaves. A line of silhouetted horsemen ride over a silhouetted hill against a red sky. Sorry, guys, not buying the sinister nature of all this.

Then the weird, tinted background (no longer clothy) turns blue. (Wow! This movie has everything! Except more than two colours!) A couple of guys called Sméagol and Deagol find the Ring. These two are hobbits, which in this movie basically means they're hairy-footed midgets. OPN describes how Sméagol killed Deagol for the Ring. Oh no! They just killed someone whose only defining attribute was his terrible acting!

The background becomes Red Cloth again, while Sméagol, now twisted by the Ring's power, becomes the evil insane monster Gollum. The way OPN informs us of this is ludicrously overdone; To approximate the effect, read this out loud in your best William Shatner voice:

"They grew to despise the creature, and they began to call him... Gollum!"

Cut to the Ring deciding to ditch its new owner, and it bounces over some rocks. It's now fully animated (the Ring, that is; everything else stays in silhouette), and I gotta say, it looks more like a tap washer than a piece of jewellery. So, in order to stop insulting Tolkien (I did like The Hobbit, and I probably owe the man a modicum of respect, which the filmmakers assuredly did not give him), I'm going to stop calling it the Ring and start calling it the Tap Washer of Doom.

The Ringsorry, the Tap Washerlands on the ground and is picked up by a silhouetted shortarse in a cape with a hood. Anyone care to guess who it is? Yes, it's Bilbo Baggins! Yay! Bilbo gets chased away by Gollum, who's now a tall, skinny silhouette with the shaggiest pigtails ever.

Comments:

fantasywind

8/22/2014 3:43:11 PM

Haha!! :) For someone who didn't like the book..because of too much exposition I presume, you ask questions that were explained in book in painful clarity (or at least character's own wondering and speculations, you know some thing MUST remain secret, it's the thrill of the suspense and mystery and all that jazz :) ), the history of Aragorn's ancestors is detailed and well explained (in fact Isildur who cut Sauron's finger off with the Ring didn't abandon the throne, when he was killed in ambush and ring lost in the river he was on his way north to claim throne of Arnor and title of High King over two realms Arnor and Gondor, his descendants remained kings in teh Northern Kingdom while descendants of his brother remained kings in Gondor until southern line died out and the North Kingdom fell), but despite important role of Aragorn he is actually a side supporting character, the Hero is of course the less qualified for the job and it is remarkable as traditional fantasy epics go (and part of Tolkien's brilliance :) ). As for the Ring...YES it is magic, it can act on it's own as a sort of sentient object of object possessing part of the will of it's creator, it can put itself on finger, it can change size and weight, it can slip off in the most inconvenient moments, it can lure evil creatures to cause it's current owner's doomy doom of DOOM (most likely his horrible death but other far worse fates can be arranged, like you know turning into wraith)!! It can also enslave minds (well one of the purposes it serves is to provide the villain the Dark Lord Sauron, I don't know about you but for me it sounds awesome :)..., is to use it to gain power to dominate minds of others, especially wearers of other magic Rings of Power since the One controls other rings, and to enhance his own power it's an amplifier artifact, when wearing it Sauron is stronger than ever, more powerful than he was before making it. The invisibility effect is explained as being drawn half into wraith world, the Unseen, and the fact that those who have the Ring (Isildur, Deagol, Smeagol, Bilbo and Frodo don't have strength needed to control it and fully master it's power) so Sauron himself when wearing it is visible (and besides being who he is in nature a powerful spirit that assumes physical form, he already exist in both worlds).

As for Nazgul attacking the inn (in the book) it's actually said that those who broke in to the room were most likely Nazgul's lackeys not the Ringwariths themselves (Aragorn says they would not attack the house full of people not unless they are desperate), meaning common thugs they coerced into service. Nazgul themselves were specifically ordered to remain in secret, they had to restrain their powers (and there are various limitaitons or factors that influence their power level), also the Ring-sense (they can sense the power of the Ring, it draws them) is not accurate it gives only general whereabouts of it's movements, and they have HUGE area to explore until they found Shire and later on in Bree they did not waste time to wreck sh*t for evulz they are patient and knew there will be many more chances to strike in wilderness which would give them advantage, like on Weathertop where they used morgul-knife they left then with notion of mission accomplished since anyone wounded with this weapon turns into wraith under their command they did not reckoned on the peculiar ''magic resistance'' of halfling (since they are little known race in wide world) and Gandalf says that a mighty human warrior would fall to this wound much earlier.

Oh those ''few touches of his own" relate to the flood wave that took form of white horses that swept the Riders (Elrond caused the flood, since he has magical control over water in his valley and Gandalf added his own tricks to increase the destructive power of the wave). As for the Three elven Rings (one of which Galadriel wears), they were never touched or corrupted by Sauron so they are safer to use, yet still they are under control of the One so if Sauron gets his Ring everyone wearing other will be in his power.

But yeah there are many weird things in this movie :).

E.a. Solinas

8/19/2013 1:41:13 AM

Actually, the moth was a PJ invention, so we would have some explanation for how the eagle turned up.

Also, Eowyn is actually Theoden's niece, not his daughter. But their relationship is father-daughter, so it's forgivable.

John Berndt

3/13/2013 10:10:33 PM

There is a good reason why you can see Sauron when he wears the One Ring. He controls it completely and can use or not use any powers in it he chooses. If he doesn't want to be invisible while wearing it he isn't. He was wearing the One Ring while corrupting Numenor and was visible the whole time.

Chris Miller

12/28/2011 4:27:57 AM

Actually the Nazgul have no great power of their own, and they fear lights and crowds.

Aragorn doesn't resume the throne because he has to defeat Sauron first, and has to keep his identity secret until then; and the Ring doesn't turn Sauron invisible because he has mastery over it.

Tanis

8/15/2011 5:32:14 PM

I lol'd so hard when you pointed it out, because I thought that guy in the Prancing Pony looked like John Wayne when I first saw the movie.

Jake Conde

7/29/2011 9:04:03 AM

Actually, in the book the moth plays no part. That's a PJ invention. In the book Gandalf consults with another wizard and asks him to send the Eagles with any news of what's going on in Middle Earth to Orthanc. The Eagle arrives, sees Gandalf's plight and whisks him away.

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